


Caught In the Undertow

by Mohini



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Divergence - Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Clint Barton's Farm, Drug Use, Flashbacks, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Red Room (Marvel), Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 14:59:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16221485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mohini/pseuds/Mohini
Summary: There's no point in fighting what she knows to be the truth anyway. She has no place in this world.





	Caught In the Undertow

Music, soft and insistent, pulls up a movie reel she’s more than happy never to see again from the deeper reaches of her mind. Clint’s there, an arm around her waist and pulling her to her feet, but everything is hazy and still the music presses in and drags up images she forgot for very good reason.

“Nat, we have to move.”

Hmm. Yes, move. The words for the movements are too soft on her tongue, the corrections of her instructors sharper, a reminder of what is expected in Soviet Russia from the girls lucky enough to be in the school here. Move. Again. More. Not like that, you stupid failure of a girl.

“Nat!”

Clint’s pulling her to her feet now, and she struggles to keep her head up. There’s static in her head, or maybe it’s on the com, and Clint’s muttering something about _not gonna happen._

Her brain latches onto the phrase, plays it on repeat. So many things that won’t ever happen. Other words intrude, long enough ago to be below immediate consciousness but swimming to the surface now, echoing.

_I have no place in the world._

They’re moving, and her feet are dragging as if through wet cement. Clint’s saying something, but the music is too loud, and it hurts. She must not feel pain. She must keep moving. Lessons learned in a thousand lifetimes, a thousand ways, she must not feel. Anything.

“Work with me here, Nat.”

Her lips won’t move. If she unclenches her jaw there’s no imagining what might come out. So many images, and her head won’t stop spinning them up and around, an endless loop of all her sins. She’s so very good at making sins. Less so at making confession. Nil at seeking reconciliation.

A pinch at her neck, and the images are hazier. A tranq. She’s never been so happy to be drugged in her life. Clint’s holding her, a flash of memory, Laura’s voice, telling her that she can be loved, too.

She wakes on the quinjet, tucked into blankets and and the vague warmth of a body near hers. She reaches out, familiar fingers interlinking with hers. Clint. Safe. Home.

“Hey there,” he tells her.

She wants to tell him, to explain why she froze, to justify her utter failure in the midst of a mission, but there’s too much pressure in her gut and opening her mouth will be a disaster.

“Here, I’ve got you,” he tells her, something held beneath her lips as she tries and fails to stifle the first insistent heave.

 She’s empty, never goes into combat with anything on her stomach, but it doesn’t stop her body trying to be sure. More people are there, crowding her, Steve with his need to help even when it’s least wanted. She flings an arm out, no coordination, just flailing because her body is insistent on bringing up air and pain to punish her for this failure. She failed. Her failure took Clint out of rotation. So much red.  Her head is going to explode, and she can barely hear Clint in the static that fills her head with the roar of her blood in her ears.

“Taking you to Laura,” he whispers, words no one else hears.

She shakes her head. Laura means Lila. And Cooper. And being Auntie Nat and she _can’t._ She gags again, pitiful, weak, and there is damp beneath her eyes but a warrior does not cry so she must not be. It’s just the retching. Has to be. She’s not human enough to make tears.

Another pinch, and comfortable, safe darkness takes her down hard.

The next time she fights her heavy eyelids, the endless movie reel has faded out. She’s drained, and there’s a headache throbbing gently at the back of her skull. Strange, how even that feels like a comfort after the brutal flashbacks of her last few conscious memories.

“You with me now?” Clint asks.

She nods, hoping her eyes can convey all she needs him to know. That she’s sorry, that she didn’t mean to go down like that, that she couldn’t stop it, that she needs him not to go any further from her than he is right now.

“The farm?” she asks instead.

“We need to lay low for a bit, regroup and make some plans.”

“But the kids,” she doesn’t finish the sentence, doesn’t point out that it’s a secret for a reason, that he said he didn’t want the kids involved. Ever. At the same time, every maternal longing she will never truly allow herself to embrace wants to see them, to feel their soft weights in her arms, to be with the little humans who think she’s just Auntie Nat and never some scary assassin with a past and a future soaked in blood.

“The kids will be happy to see you.”

Discussion closed. Nat knows well enough when to drop it and leave it where it lands. Clint puts her go bag in her lap, eyebrows lifting in silent suggestion. She rifles through, finding the little tin that holds her stash of chemicals for all occasions. She dry swallows a thin white bar, sticking her tongue out after in parody of a med check. Clint mutters something about not being an asshole, and she smiles. It doesn’t quite reach her eyes, but it feels better. She feels like she can mimic being a human now, and that’s recovery enough for the moment.

She drifts, head resting on Clint’s shoulder until they touch down in a field. She wants to tell him she doesn’t need his help when he puts a hand on her back to guide her to the farmhouse she sees as home more than any other structure in the world. She doesn’t, though, because even with the Xanax swimming lazily in her bloodstream, she knows the memory assault is still so close to the surface and if ever she needed the grounding of here and now, this is the time.

They trudge through the door, Steve and Tony talking about things they didn’t know, shouldn’t know now, things that Clint is risking because she fell apart. Laura’s there, and then Lila’s asking about Auntie Nat and she finds her voice, opens her arms, and forces the memories down beneath the iron reinforcements in her psyche. This place, this is where she is Auntie Nat, and the little girl in her arms is reason enough. For everything.


End file.
